My friend returned from Holland with her two kids. She was told that she only needed to test herself before traveling, not the kids but that the two tests after arrival (to be done in quarantine) had to be booked for all three of them, at the cost of £630! She tried to arrange some cheaper or free tests but was told that they can only be these official tests as it's very important that they are done at specified times (day 2 and 8 of the quarantine). So she paid the £630 only to discover that the tests didn't arrive on time and were going to be delivered a week late!!! She got understandably angry and claimed her money back from the credit card company. We will see how it all ends...
There have been quite a few people receiving the tests well after the supposed sample date.
This is indeed true, it is in fact a rip off dressed up as a do-gooding exercise.
The published reason for the providers of these test being ‘cherry-picked’ is so that they can test for new variants of the virus being brought into the country. I smell a cash-cow here...
I am no expert in how this is administrated but I imagine it would incur higher costs to the testing company.
BUT,
having had to have two tests to get into the uk, for 99.99% of people now coming into the uk would test negative after days 2, 5 and 8 and therefore nearly all the tests would go through the basic test process, return a negative result and then binned..
All tests coming in are sequenced yes but thats NOT done by the test provider company.
All they do is send off the swab to a government sponsored sequencing lab.
So nope, the cost to company or end user is nothing extra there.
To me its nothing but profiteering combined with trying to make travel as unappealing as possible to as many people as possible.
May I point out that the only "proof" required at the border that you've booked these tests is an email/invoice and some kind of reference number.
Do you catch my drift?
